Don't Do Windows!

I bought a Sony Reader (an e-book reader). I wanted to buy the old 505 before the new sleeker tiny model gluts the market on Aug. 25. I didn’t want anything pink or doll-size, which the future promises. Twenty-four hours after bringing home my neat leather-bound mass-market-paperback-sized device which, according to the electronics salesman, didn't sell until inexplicably it flew out of the store last week - Kindle backlash? - I am thrilled with this unobtrusive device for reading free e-books from manybooks.net.

You would think I would be a Kindle person after years of buying books from Amazon, but I reconsidered my options after the recent deletion of 1984 from customers’ Kindles. (This Orwellian scandal really happened: there was a copyright problem, Amazon had illegally sold 1984 as an e-book, and Kindle customers woke up to find their copies of 1984 deleted, with a refund.)

That's ironically intrusive.

There was one problem with the Sony. I didn't read the box. I have a Mac, and the “Mac environment” doesn’t "support" the Sony Reader.

Fortunately, bloggers suggested some (high-tech) solutions, so I didn't have to take it back.

I don't mess with tech, though. It took a one-and-a-half-hour bus trip to the Apple Store to implement the solution. The Genius Bar fixed me up with free software that allows me to bypass the Sony-Microsoft Windows requirement. So it has a happy ending.

I love my e-book!

No, I still don’t do windows!